Monday, December 27, 2010

How about beginning this rant with a few realizations. I realize that it is only December and that we have a lot of winter to go. I realize that, by all normal standards, we have had a fairly mild autumn our part of Nova Scotia. I also realize that it is pointless to rail against the weather. Despite the mildness of the early season and the waste of emotion, I am getting grumpy with the weather. I am not sure if I am getting soft but, I am quickly growing tired of the repeated pattern of storms and power outages. In the past few months we have had hurricanes, tropical storms, post tropical storms, weather bombs, nor'easters, and something called snow thunder last night. Each of these storms seems to knock out power. On top of this, we have seen rain, rain and more rain. Add a few frogs and locust and we are moving onto the biblical stage.

I suppose it isn't really the weather but the power outages that are getting to me. We are not talking about outages of the five to ten minute variety. While those outages are an inconvenience, they are not too upsetting. The outages we have been experiencing run anywhere from 12 hours to several days. About an hour ago our power came back on after 15 1/2 hours. A week and a half ago it was off for 20 hours. It was off for 8 hours the week before that. A century ago I would not have been making these complaints. The difference being that a century ago life was not geared to electricity. Lanterns and candles were a daily part of life. Meals could easily be prepared on a wood or coal fired stove. Daily patterns were arranged to take advantage of the rising and setting of the sun. While I know how to live without electricity, most of our daily patterns are somewhat at the mercy of Benjamin Franklin's discovery.

The images in this post were taken around our house this morning while the power was out. In an act of desperation, we enjoyed a hot cup of hand ground coffee perked on the side burner of our BBQ.